Mississippi Cotton

by Paul H. Yarbrough

  Ben spoke again. “Well, I jus’ wanted to ask him if he knew why the sheriff was askin’ ‘bout Looty.”

  “Looty?” I asked.

  “Yessir, Mr. Jake—Looty. The sheriff was askin’ ‘bout Looty and if I’d seen him around lately and what he was doin’ and things like that. I don’t know what he thinks it got to do with dat dead man.”

  “Well, maybe because he was shot with a .22,” I said. Everybody turned and looked at me. I hadn’t even mentioned to Casey and Taylor that I had heard it was a .22.

  “How do you know that?” BB asked. “That he was shot with a .22?”

  “That’s what the deputy said at the bus station,” I said. “They were talkin’ about it and about a man and his son ‘Julius’ who had found him while they were fishin’.”

  “Well, I’ll be. So you already know ‘bout this business,” BB said. “And you’re sure he said it was a .22?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Well, well, Julius, maybe that s’plains it—the sheriff askin’ ‘bout ol’ Looty, I mean. I wonder if they’s thinkin’ old Looty is doin’ more’n shootin’ chickens now.”

  “Well, let’s jus’ forget about it, Daddy. It’s nothing we need to be talking about anymore; none of our business, now.”

  I felt important, like I knew something that only the police knew. I took a big bite of watermelon and leaned back against the tree. Taylor and Casey looked at me with a jealous look. I guess because I knew something they didn’t.

  “What did you tell the sheriff, Daddy?” BB propped himself up with one arm on the ground, holding a slice of watermelon with the other. He took a small bite then spit a seed.

  “I jus’ told him Looty was Looty. He come ‘round from time to time. Came by jus’ de other day offerin’ to shoot birds in my corn.” Ben put his pipe on the ground and began scraping the remainder of his watermelon from the rind with his knife.

  “Well, I don’t think you need to see Mr. Hightower about it. I think we know what the sheriff is thinkin’ now,” BB said. “They know Looty spent time on the county farm for shootin’ what he wasn’t supposed to be shootin’, and they gonna see what he was up to before they found that man. I’ll bet you a nickel that’s what it is. Jus’ makes sense to me.”

  Just then, we saw Mr. Hightower coming. His pickup rattled about as much as Ben’s but didn’t show the trail of smoke. He pulled up behind Ben’s truck and got out, his back and underarms soaked in sweat. He walked briskly as if he had all the energy in the world. His Stetson was pulled down shading his face, the crown soaked with sweat, like my cap.

  “Well, BB, Ben. How we doin’?”

  “Fine, fine, Mr. Earl. Jus’ brought these hard workin’ boys some watermelon for dinner.”

  “Waste of good melon, Ben. They ain’t worked but half a day.”

  Ben and BB laughed. Casey and Taylor and I sort of laughed.

  “Y’all gonna be on these weeds the rest of the day, BB?”

  “Yes, sir. I thought we might get through a little early, but it looks like it’ll take the rest of the afternoon.”

  I couldn’t help but wonder if I was holding them back. After all, I was the sissy city slicker being out-hoed by a cousin two years younger than me. Then BB said something that made me know we were friends.

  “This here fellow from the big city of Jackson is ‘bout as good a field hand as I ever seen. I’ll take him as a workin’ man any day of the week.” He reached over and patted me on the head.

  It made me feel especially good when Taylor and Casey smiled at me and didn’t say anything, although they knew they had covered much more ground than I had. I looked up at BB. I liked him.

  “Well, that’s good,” Mr. Hightower said. “I’ll jus’ leave y’all here with your work and come back and get you later—after five prob’ly.”

  He took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He replaced his hat, then stooped down and picked up some dirt and squeezed it with his hand. Farmers were always picking up dirt and rubbing it and studying it, it seemed like. My daddy had told me once that the soil was almost a part of a farmer’s soul.

  “Say, Ben, you know anything about what Looty’s been up to lately? Sheriff’s been askin’ about him.” Mr. Hightower resumed his full height and rubbed his hands together, shaking the dirt from his hands.

  Ben rubbed his chin, like he had anticipated the question. “Well, to tell you de truth I was gonna ask you the same thing, Mr. Earl. De sheriff done ask me ‘bout him. I guess he tol’ you dat me and BB found a body down at the Greenville bridge. Ugly, ugly sight, I tell you.” His eyes darted toward BB.

  BB leaned on his rake and just listened. We remained on the ground, getting every bit of shade time we could, our eyes and ears glued to Ben and Mr. Hightower and their conversation.

  “Yeah, he told me it was y’all that found him. I had read about a man being found dead. It was in the paper, Wednesday or Thursday, I think. But they didn’t say who found him. Jus’ said two unidentified Nigra men who had been fishin’. But the way he’s talkin’, he might even bring Looty in for questioning. Maybe hold him for a while. Anyhow, that’s ‘bout all I know.”

  “Sheriff say how the man was killed?” asked BB. “Never did tell us. We thought maybe he was drowned.” He glanced over at me.

  “Said he was killed with a .22 bullet. Shot two or three times. I forget jus’ how many. Didn’ y’all read it in the paper the next day?”

  “Oh, yeah,” BB said. “I do remember that now.”

  There was quiet for a minute. It seemed like everybody was thinking—probably the same thing, Looty and his .22 rifle. Taylor and Casey would be thinking the same thing I was—that business about the snake and about the shells.

  Both Mr. Hightower and Ben drove off, back to whatever they had been doing.

  BB announced that it was almost one, and we needed to get back to the field. Casey pretended not to hear—pretended that he was asleep, lying in the shade. Taylor didn’t pretend anything, he just said he would rather go fishing or be dead.

  BB laughed and announced that we had better get back to it or Mr. Hightower would be back, or even worse Cousin Trek would come out and we’d really have the devil to pay. After considerable effort, the three of us struggled to our feet and made one last delay, a drink of water. The ice tea was gone, so even I was willing to drink from the diseased dipper.

  I looked out over the long rows of cotton. They looked like they were laid out by a surveyor with a plumb bob and tripod. Perfect. These same fields would be ready for picking in just five or six weeks, then again in October. Taylor and Casey said that picking was the closest thing to dying that there was without actually doing it. Hoeing was close enough for me.

  About the only thing hoeing had in common with picking cotton was that it was hot. During picking season, in addition to the heat you had to bend and stoop a lot more, and there wasn’t a hoe to lean on either. In order to get the cotton out you had to pull it out of the boll by hand, grabbing the entire boll with its needle sharp, dried petals wherein your fingers would get stuck until they bled. And for some reason, big red wasps like to hunker down in some of the bolls, unknown to the picker until he got stung. Cotton fields were also a paradise for the large yellow cotton spiders and their webs.

  BB caught me in my daydream. “What ya thinking’ about, Mr. Jake? You lookin’ at that cotton like it’s a cloud or something. Maybe you’re tryin’ to make a picture out of it. Maybe make it into something it’s not. Or maybe you’re hopin’ it’ll blow away.” He laughed at his own wit.

  “I was jus’ thinkin’ about y’all havin’ to pick it after I leave. Cousin Trek says that’s the hardest work.”

  BB pushed his rake out into the dirt, drawing it back and forth making a bunch of lines in the dirt. Just back and forth, lines and more lines, like he was trying to design something. “Let me ask you, Mr. Jake, have you ever read about Booker T. Washington? You know who he was?”

  I wasn
’t for sure what BB wanted to know, if anything. He might have been just testing me to see how much I knew about Booker T. Washington. But I was glad for the conversation because it gave me more rest time.

  “A little bit. We learned about him some in school. I think he used to be a slave, and when the War Between the States was over he started a school or something for Negroes. I think it was in Alabama.”

  “Well, that mostly right. And maybe I’ll tell you more about him sometime. But mostly you should remember something he said: ‘Nobody can prosper ‘til they realize that there is as much dignity in hoeing a field as there is in writing a poem.’ Now, pickin’ cotton may be hard work, but it’s not bad work. There’s no such thing. Don’t you ever believe somebody when they say that some work’s not good enough for them. You avoid that kind of fellow like a plague.”

  I looked at him as he looked out over the field. The sweat was already breaking out on his face again. He seemed happy in what he was doing, but also had a look of adventure—like he might do more with his life if his Mississippi cotton days ever ended.

  “I guess I never heard that exactly before. My mother always says, ‘Any job worth doing is worth doing well.’”

  “Well, your momma is right. But I guess what it should mean to you—I mean right now while you’re learnin’, is that all work is worthy. Every bit of it. Mr. Truman’s job in Washington and this job you and me are doin’. Both just as important, one to the other. Hard work can only make a better man out of you. In fact, it is the main thing that’ll make a man out of you. And I’ll tell you something else. If work is bad, then the Lord is bad, ‘cause He gave it to us.”

  “Well, He must really like us, ‘cause He gave us plenty of it,” I said.

  He tilted his head back and gave a big laugh. “Well, I s’pose you’re right ‘bout that.”

  As hot as it was, and as tired as I was, I almost wanted to race out into the cotton inferno and start weeding. BB had somehow excited me about hard work. I wanted to ask and couldn’t hold back. “BB, how come you went to war instead of goin’ to college?”

  He turned and smiled the BB smile—big, broad, happy and genuine. “For the University Grays.”

  “Huh?”

  “Let’s get back to work, Mr. Jake.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Tuesday afternoon and my second day of work was over. I had earned almost four dollars for the two days, and I had the blisters to show for it. But relief was on the horizon. Tomorrow we would be going to Clarksdale to pick up Big Trek, and I was looking forward to the long drive. About forty miles, Cousin Trek had said. It would be fun riding in the open bed of the pickup watching as we passed the fields, not having to be in them. On a long trip like that, Cousin Trek might even stop at a filling station and buy us a Coca-Cola. A day off.

  The rest of the week looked good, too. We told Cousin Carol we might go fishing again on Thursday, if we could get out of work part of the day. I had only worked Monday and Tuesday, but I still had Friday and Saturday morning of this week; then all through Friday of next week, before my final week.

  But what we really wanted to do Thursday afternoon was go skinny-dipping in some old private pond. There were regular places to swim like the old Highway 49 county pond. It was pretty big, and everybody could go there; nevertheless we liked our own private place. But if Cousin Carol knew what we were going to do one of her laws would be laid down: No naked swimming.

  “It is not only sinful but in poor taste,” she had once said. Cousin Trek had offered no opinion other than when we brought up the subject of swimming at all, he just told us to be careful at the county pond because it’s pretty deep in some places.

  And Friday was picture show night again. THE MAN FROM PLANET X was coming Friday and Saturday. Yep, the rest of the week would allow me some rest from BB’s world of hard work, and as motivated as I had gotten, loafing was a narcotic. I had once heard Daddy say that. I could believe that hard work would make a man out of you. I just didn’t want to grow all the way up in one week.

  “Y’all get cleaned up, supper will be ready about six,” Cousin Carol said. She was working over the stove and hollering instructions over her shoulder. “Take a bath. And if y’all want to sleep on the screened porch tonight, y’all will have to pull those old pallets down from the attic.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Taylor answered all questions.

  We planned on sleeping on the porch—after we went to Looty’s house.

  “Well, you fellows don’t look any the worse for wear, for two days of work,” Cousin Trek said. He took a platter of country fried steak from Cousin Carol, stabbed a nice one, and passed it to Casey. “Don’t forget we’re gonna leave about nine in the mornin’. That means y’all can sleep in a little, but I don’t want y’all stayin’ in bed all mornin’.”

  Casey tried to flip a steak with his fork like he was using a spatula. It missed and he had to drop his fork and grab the steak and juggle it while he held on to the platter for what seemed an interminable period. I couldn’t believe it didn’t flop on the floor. As soon as he rescued the steak, he placed it gently on his plate, leaned over and picked his fork from the floor. There was a silence.

  Cousin Trek stared a white-hot stare at Casey for about five minutes it seemed like. He didn’t say a word, just stared. I personally thought Casey’s life was about to end and Taylor and I would be going to Looty’s by ourselves. Playing around at the table was one of the major no-no‘s. Of course one thing in Casey’s favor was neither the steak nor the platter had hit the floor. It was a technicality that I’m sure he was praying would save him.

  After the long pause, I guess Cousin Carol realized that Cousin Trek wasn’t going to dismiss Casey or kill him so she said, “Now just march into the kitchen and get a clean fork. And don’t play with it.”

  Cousin Trek finally broke his silence. “If you ever do that again, you’ll wish you had never heard the word switch.”

  “Yes, sir,” Casey said. He got a clean fork.

  “Now, Jake, would you like some corn?” Cousin Carol asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.” She passed it to Taylor, who passed it to me. He looked at me, trying not to smile. We were both thinking how funny it was, Casey juggling the steak. It took everything we had not to break out laughing.

  We helped with the dishes and got the pallets down from the attic before we announced we were going to play outside for a while. It was almost seven and was getting close to dark. Playing outside after dark was something everybody did as far as I knew. In Jackson we played outdoors after dark in the summer all the time. After June, and the great lightning bug chases had passed, we played games like kick the can, red light green light, may-I and others. For some reason, after dark had its own excitement and was a time when you were without your parents’ supervision for a little bit. There were no cars to run over you unless you were downtown, as most people had only one car, and it wasn’t routinely used for driving around at night for pleasure. And it was as cool outside at night as it was inside.

  But this night we had a special mission, for what we had begun to think of as a murder case. We decided that the place to begin our investigation was at Looty’s house. Naturally our plan had to be kept secret because we couldn’t just say, “Oh, by the way we are going to spy on Looty’s and see if we can find out if he’s a murderer. We’ll be back by bedtime.”

  Looty lived about two miles from Cousin Trek’s farm. We rode our bikes, a jostled ride down a gravel road and across rowed and hoed fields. By the time we got close enough to go on foot, it was past dark. We got off our bikes and laid them down behind a clump of trees.

  From the edge of the trees we could see his house. It appeared a single light was on inside. There wasn’t a porch light on, front or back, and the moon was high and full tonight so we could see pretty good. There was enough light for me to see the barbecue—the big brick one around back. At first, it made me nervous just to look at it. I hoped I’d get a chance to pee
k in the window and see the famous jar.

  We crept out of the trees, staying in the shadows before sprinting to the back of the house. We moved down the side of the house until we got close to the front porch. A single cloud floated over the moon, and for a brief moment we lost our night vision. It was scary, and almost felt as if someone was watching in the darkness. We paused, waiting for the moonlight to refocus its beacon on the house. Even the crickets seemed subdued tonight, as if they were aware of something sinister. Taylor motioned with the flat of his hand for us to move slowly and signaled with his finger to his lips. He turned around and put his arms around us as if we were in a little football huddle and he was about to call a big play.

  “Okay, jus’ whispers from now on,” Taylor said. “We got to be careful. Be quiet, absolutely quiet. Don’t make a sound. I mean not a sound. We can’t be sure if anybody’s out here. So just keep very quiet. Very quiet.”

  Casey farted.

  “Will you quit that, you little dope!” A loud, airy shush from Taylor. Casey and I both had to put our hands over our mouths to keep from laughing.

  Taylor got a little mad. Some of it was because he thought we weren’t being serious, and some of it was because he really was scared. “Now, I’m tellin’ y’all, we could get killed out here.”

  Casey and I both nodded. We had gotten control over our laughter, but not enough to risk an audible answer.

  “Now come on,” Taylor said.

  We dropped to our hands and knees and crawled the short distance toward the front porch. Taylor was leading and by the time we got to the corner we could see there was another light on in the front of the house. Without a word, we understood Taylor’s goal. It was to get on the porch and look through the front window. He started up the first of three steps which were on all three sides of the wooden porch. There was a creak from the old boards, and we all froze for a split second.